Gateway Cities and their Hinterland: Global Cities from the Global South as Nodes in Global Commodity Chains

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Javier Revilla Diez; Dr. Sören Scholvin
• Subject Area: Human Geography
• Term: from 2015 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 275355279

During the last decades some regions of the Global South have realised a considerable economic rise. Global cities there possess thriving and globally competitive secondary and tertiary sectors. They are the hinges between the periphery and the cores of the world-economy. We argue that the role of global cities from the Global South as hinges or gateway cities results from the agglomeration of transnational companies, related industries and producer services, adequate institutions and transport infrastructure. The role of gateway cities and especially their relationship with their hinterland can be captured by causal mechanisms based on independent variables handily consolidated in the 2009 World Development Report: density, distance and division. Hence we will answer the following main question: How do density, distance and division (independent variables) condition the global interlinking of the periphery of the world economy (dependent variable) by gateway cities in the Global South? Our preliminary research indicates that the oil and gas sector in Cape Town, São Paulo/Rio de Janeiro and Singapore is suitable to test the relevance of the three Ds and identify related causal mechanisms in exploratory case studies. This project is innovative in four ways. First, by contextualising density, distance and division empirically and theoretically we react to the criticism of the World Development Report. We show the relevance of rather traditional causal factors for economic processes, factors that have been neglected by evolutionary and relational approaches in Economic Geography. Second, we link research on global cities and research on global commodity chains, advancing the inroads built in Derudder´s and Witlox´s Commodity Chains and World Cities. This way we overcome the disconnectedness of global cities from their hinterland and the poor embeddedness of global commodity chains. We also build tie ins with research on location choices of transnational companies. Third, we contribute to research on emerging economies, whose role as regional economic nodes and growth engines remains to be proven. We also advance a perspective on emerging economies that is not state-centric and hence more appropriate for processes that presently shape the world-economy. Fourth, addressing methodological weaknesses in research on global cities and global commodity chains we make use of the FDI Markets Database from the Financial Times and the Zephyr Database provided by the Bureau van Dijk in order to measure flows that originate in/pass through the global cities that we analyse. We furthermore apply a qualitative methodology that comes close to being intersubjectively verifiable and allows computer-based scenario modelling: fuzzy cognitive maps.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Brazil
• Partner Organisation: Fundaçao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo - FAPESP
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Celio Hiratuka